WowMakers have a pretty interesting story. A few years ago, before 2011, the founders of WowMakers were still in college and were just dabbling with Photoshop. One of them ended up winning $300 in a design competition and this is when they realized what things could be. Vivek Raghavan, Jithesh Lakshman and Jaseem Thayal Shareef decided to take a leap of faith and didn’t go the traditional route. They worked for a bit with Foradian but soon after, they found their way to starting up. And this is how WowMakers had taken birth.

It was also the time when the Startup Village in Kerala had been set up and as things would turn out, WowMakers were chosen to be the first startup to be incubated from Startup Village. The journey has been uphill since then and WowMakers has managed to do some very impressive work. The company has grown and is now venturing into the products space with CrowdStudio which is a platform for curated crowdsourcing.The team was connected to a bunch of early stage startups who were looking for affordable design solutions and on the other hand, they knew many freelancers who’d fit the bill.

“There were many early stage businesses who couldn’t afford us and were in desperate need of designers who could provide them with affordable designs of high quality. We also knew a lot of freelance designers who could provide affordable design, but had difficulty finding clients,” says Jaseem. Over time, they realized that they were in the perfect position to build a platform to connect both groups. And this is where CrowdStudio came into the picture- a platform for curated crowdsourcing. “The site’s goal is to create awesome branding for startups and SMEs, and a platform for aspiring designers to showcase the best of their work and earn great money for it. And judging by the responses we’ve got, curated crowdsourcing is the way to go,” says Jaseem. The beginning has been good till now:

Total designer requested for membership crossed 1500 mark out of which around 100 designers have been approved.

The platform has been leveraged to complete 15 logo design projects for their clients.

Around ~1000 designs have been submitted by the curated designer community for these 15 projects.

The team at Crowdstudio believes the ‘Designers space in India’ to be very unorganized. CrowdStudio filters the list and accept designers only after reviewing their portfolio thereby creating a curated list. “We try to bring quality and professionalism aspect that’s totally missing today, still keeping the platform economical to startup and small businesses,’ says Jaseem. Crowdstudio has been tailored for a market like India with three pricing plans:

The team seems to have struck a chord and found a space to position themselves. Still very early days, there are multiple ways in how CrowdStudio can roll out from here.

Jubin is an old timer at YourStory. Deeply entrenched in the Indian startup ecosystem, he has written about more than 1000 startups. With an engineering background and a keen interest in data analysis, his passion for writing and entrepreneurship makes him a perfect match for Yourstory. He operates from the mountains in Dharamshala where he also runs a hackbase. He can be reached on Twitter @jub_in and on mail at jubin@yourstory.com